Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-02-07/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Palestine-Israel articles 5 has closed

A final decision was posted by the Arbitration Committee concerning the case Palestine-Israel articles 5 (aka PIA5).

Summary of decision

A concise summary can be found at Special:Permalink/1271417868#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 5 closed. This is a summary of the summary.

Arbs agreed on the following:

Extended confirmed protection (ECP) is now the default status of all PIA articles, whether or not disruption has occurred (also, Articles for creation drafts by non-ECP users apparently will not be accepted, according to a clarification issued just before we go to press^{[footnotes 1]}).
No new bans occurred – user Ïvana was already banned in pre-case Arbcom action, but re-banned in IPA5.
Some topic bans were adopted.
A number of warnings and admonishments were handed out.
A novel remedy called "Balanced editing restriction", to be enforced technically (via edit filter), was constructed by the committee as a discretionary sanction:

In a given 30-day period, a user sanctioned under this restriction is limited to making no more than one-third of their edits in the Article, Talk, Draft, and Draft talk namespaces to pages that are subject to the extended-confirmed restriction under Arab–Israeli conflict contentious topic procedures.

A novel remedy called "Article title restriction" was constructed by the committee (although it failed 10–1).

An article on a violent engagement within the Arab–Israeli conflict, broadly construed...may not describe the engagement as a "massacre", "murder", "bombing", "genocide", or "assassination" or similarly contentious word.

The community was encouraged to run a request for comment (RFC) on POV forks.
SPI clerks may invite contributors to leave (with existing authorities).

The committee was divided on "AndreJustAndre banned". An 8–6 majority decided not to enact that remedy, but a majority did decide to levy a "suspended site ban", under which a new Clarification and Amendment (ARCA) case can result in a relatively quick ban by motion.

Footnotes:

^ A clerk even stated that a non-ECP user merely creating a draft in the PIA topic area was a violation of the Arbcom ruling

Community reaction

Community reaction to the decision was robust, with nearly 60 kB of comments on the committee noticeboard's talk page, as of this issue's deadline.

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Without commenting on anything else, the article title restriction failed 1–10 (with three abstentions). I guess constructed could mean "was proposed but failed", but it could be more clear that it ultimately did not pass. Pinging @Bri and JPxG. Best, House Blaster (talk • he/they) 05:54, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I have blasted the appropriate sentence. jp×g 🗯️ 05:56, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

JPxG In a similar vein, I assume you mean Ïvana, rather than the non-existent Ivanaa :) CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 07:20, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issue has been, uh, eeked. jp×g 🗯️ 08:20, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Substantial changes have been made to I/P articles at the same time as a large off-wiki canvassing operation occurred^[1]; will rollback be possible, or did mass deletion make that impossible? If only a handful of participants have been topic banned, and the evidence of their canvassing has been deleted, how can NPOV be restored? Wouldn't it be imperative to revert these articles to their prior versions and then gain consensus for changes?Allthemilescombined1 (talk) 10:27, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tech for Palestine's decision to delete its logs shouldn't force us into reverting our articles on an active conflict into an out-of-date state. If you believe that specific changes made during that period violate WP:NPOV, you can propose their reversion and argue from first principles on the basis that 2023-'24 precedent may be contaminated by canvassing. However, broad rollback to WP:PIA articles would unnecessarily deprive us of many uncontroversial changes. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 02:39, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see I was cited in a footnote. To be clear, @Bri, my comment didn't depend on anything new in WP:PIA5 (which hadn't happened yet when that Draft: was created), just the existing WP:ARBECR restriction as imposed on the topic area in the earlier WP:PIA4 decision.
(I don't think I was saying something novel. Draft:Homophobia in Palestine, Draft:October 7, 2023 (2024 TV series), and Draft:Battle of Um Katef are some examples of drafts that were deleted on that basis.) SilverLocust 💬 13:56, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The "Balanced editing restriction" is rather curious, as on the face of it an editor can easily circumvent it by making two quick trivial edits to other articles or talk pages each time they make a substantive edit to one of the in-scope articles. Neiltonks (talk) 16:35, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Merlin, Ohad (2024-12-12). "Wikipedia suspends pro-Palestine editors coordinating efforts behind the scenes". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2025-02-07.

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